When wargaming... you always ask "what if" questions...

What if they woke Hitler at the first word of D-Day invasion.

What if Lee took the high ground at Gettysburg on Day 1?

What if Charles Martel lost the Battle of Tours in 732 to the Umayyad Caliphate giving a permanent Muslim footprint in Europe?



And what the fuck was Trump thinking with the JD Vance choice?

Ok. I can answer it, somewhat. Vance was the pick of Thiel and Musk and the key to the 9 figure pro Trump SUPER PAC...

But before Vance... I said right here that Trump should pick Tulsi Gabbard, a millennial at just 43yo, she meets Trumps standard of "hotness", former Dem, veteran, well spoken and had a fight with VP Harris in the 2020 debate.

Like I said... humanity and the world were lucky that Hitler slept through D-Day... and we're lucky that Trump picked Vance who's become a Palin-level joke.

Post-Launch, the first Harris vs Trump polling.

Harris Is Uniting and Energizing Democratic Voters — and Polling Better Against Trump

A Morning Consult survey conducted after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign found that 65% of Democratic voters support Harris to lead the party’s ticket, more than double the level of support she had in a hypothetical look at the same question late last month following the first presidential debate.

Former President Donald Trump leads Harris by 2 percentage points, 47% to 45%, in our survey conducted after Biden announced his decision to step aside, marking an improvement from the 6-point margin Biden faced in our surveys conducted ahead of his exit from the race.

Polling... it's not the Trump vs Biden/Harris part to pay attention to... CAMPAIGN STRATEGY

It's difficult to look at the barrage of Trump vs Biden or Trump vs Harris polls and really have any idea what the next week or month will bring.

They're snapshots.

But let's look deeper to understand the trauma and chaos our country is going through,

Well.. we have a long history of right track/wrong track polls.

I looked at a Gallup rt/wt poll from 1979 to today. Here it is and then I'll explain why I think it's significant.





https://news.gallup.com/poll/1669/general-mood-country.aspx

At the worst time in the Carter administration the right track numbers dropped down to 12% of Americans that thought the US was heading in the "right direction"...

Right around the Iran Hostage Crisis began in Nov. 1979 again it dropped down to 17% for a bit.

For the next 45 years... it goes up and down. The deep downward spikes are all brief, recovering rapidly.

From 1979 it only dipped below 20% 5-6 times and recovered within a few months.

From 1984 to 1991, the average rt was around 50% of the country.

Papa Bush briefly drilled the rt number down into the 20's again handing off low numbers to Clinton.

And then Clinton went to work. Boy did he. The rt number in Clintons last few years were near 70% several times. 60%+ was average....

THEN something happened. The spirit of the USA was broken by a year after 9-11 and war drums banged. Shrub took Clintons 60-70% rt numbers and drilled it into the sub 10% region in 2008.

Obama averaged the mid 20's...

Trump hit mid 30's right before the pandemic crashed it down to 12%

Post COVID, 2021-2024 it's averaging in the 20's

This brings up several questions. What happened after Bill Clinton? 9-11, the Iraq War? Was the damage to the American psyche permanent? Is it generational, are millennials just more grumpy?

Want to figure out how to win elections? Figure out why Americans are so unhappy.

These are not really partisan numbers. When 20% of the population is unhappy with the direction of the country that means D's and R's are both unhappy.

But it's because D's say the R's are to blame for the state of the country... and R's blame the D's.

Bill Clinton's America was "Peak America" if you ask me.

Before a few hundred people repeat misinformation... AP confirms Ronny Jackson med license current.

Jackson appears to be licensed to practice medicine in Florida, according to a state health department database. Records from the American Board of Emergency Medicine also show that Jackson has a certification in Emergency Medicine, valid through the end of 2025.

A spokesperson for the congressman did not immediately provide a response when asked about the status of his license, and Trump campaign’s did not immediately respond to questions.

Jackson has come under considerable scrutiny. After administering a physical to Trump in 2018, he drew headlines for extolling the then-president’s “incredibly good genes” and suggesting that “if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years he might live to be 200 years old.”

NASA Cancels VIPER Moon Mission After Spending $450 Million to Build a Rover

Sigh... it's just money, right?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nasa-cancels-viper-moon-mission-after-spending-450-million-to-build-a-rover-180984744/

After spending about $450 million to build a rover destined to search for lunar ice, NASA announced it will cancel the program. Amid budget concerns, the decision marks the end of the agency’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), just days before the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, which achieved the first human lunar landing on July 20, 1969.

The car-sized VIPER rover was in the middle of environmental testing when it got shut down. NASA says other lunar missions will carry out its goal of searching for ice in the shaded craters on the moon’s south pole.

“Our path forward will make maximum use of the technology and work that went into VIPER, while preserving critical funds to support our robust lunar portfolio,” Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, says in a statement.

Remember the "misspelled" firemans coat at the RNC?

But when Corey Comperatore’s gear was brought on stage, there was a glaring error: His name, embroidered on a fireman’s coat was misspelled as “Compertore.”

That’s how his name was embroidered by the Buffalo Township fire department, however.

CBS News learned from the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company that this had been done intentionally because there was only enough space on the coat for a certain number of letters.

The effect of Musk/X being pro-Trump can't be overstated.

Noticed this morning that Elon retweeted an AI video made by an obvious Trump worshipper... and within TWO hours it had 25,000,000 views.

It's a 2 minute AI re-make of the matrix with Trump as Neo and Biden as Agent Smith.

Sounds silly BUT... campaigns PAY millions for ads that reach an audience of 800 or 900k people on TV.

These online memes on X, FB or TikTok create their own "reality" where Trump is heroic...

An increasingly small section of the population get their news and education through legitimate sources.

No, I'm not going to link to it.

Trump and Zelensky speak by phone as Ukraine worries about US backing

Former President Donald J. Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, spoke over the phone late this week amid mounting concern in Kyiv that a second Trump administration would spell the end of American support in Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

Ukrainian officials worry that if a re-elected Mr. Trump kept to his vow to end the war quickly — he has suggested that he could end it in one day — it would allow Russia to keep the territory it occupies and leave it in a position to attack Ukraine again.

In a social media post about the call, which took place on Friday, Mr. Trump said that as president he would “bring peace to the world and end the war that has cost so many lives.” He said both Russia and Ukraine “will be able to come together and negotiate a deal that ends the violence.”

Something pretty crazy about the RNC... not quite Conspiracy Theory...

The RNC concluded with the balloon drop with the Trumps on stage... and a live performance of Nessun Dorma from Puccini.

Not exactly YMCA, American Badass or Lee Greenwood.

Why Nessun Dorma?

Tom Clancy was a Republican, died in 2013...

The Sum of all Fears was released as a movie in 2001.

At the end of the movie... there is a 3 minute scene that starts with the playing of Nessun Dorma and shows brutal executions of individuals involved in treason or conspiracy earlier in the movie.

"Sum of all Fears" as a code word was in several Qanon drops.



Oh but Wargamer, did Trump even know about Clancy?

According to Haberman, Trump devised a plot to bomb foreign drug production facilities on foreign lands... as in "Clear and Present Danger"... another Clancy novel and movie.

Does Trump even watch movies? Actually... supposedly, he's quite the cinephile.

Soooo... tell me I'm wrong and that Trump isn't sending a clear signal.

RNC speech was a bad speech... but Trump has NEVER presented a "good speech"

He needed to do a few things.

He started off with the teary eyed rendition of what happened in Butler... this was "Made for TV" and an essential part of the speech.

The rest... was typical Trump rally speech. Incoherent, rambling, full of lies and exaggerations.

I don't think the speech moved the needle one way or another. Ratings will probably be big because many people wanted to hear and see him speak after the assassination attempt. He may have touched a few hearts with the shooting story... but immediately reverted to old Trump moments later.

This speech didn't lose him any votes... and he didn't gain any either.

This race is incredibly static.

Trump has been +1 or 2% up in the poll aggregate according to 538 for at least 4 months... minus a couple days polling.

The shooting... the debate, a near coup in the Democratic Party fueled by donors and the media... nothing seems to matter.

At this point, IMHO... the only thing that will turn the race upside down is if the anti-Biden folks succeed in getting him to step down. And it won't be a positive movement. Trump will be even more full of himself "They quit on me... they're cowards" and social media will be full of memes depicting Trump as Genghis Khan towering over his vanquished foes...

There's nothing to be gained by replacing Biden.

538 has this as precisely a 50/50 race right now.

I'll take a coin flip over the odds of drawing "21" all day long.

Hang in there, Joe.